PayPal’s cryptocurrency partner, Paxos, closed last year with one of the biggest funding rounds witnessed by the crypto world to date. The funding rounded off a big year for Paxos, which announced its partnership with PayPal prior to bitcoin’s rally with prices still rising to unimagined heights today.
Led by Declaration Partners, an investment advisor to the family office of Carlyle Group billionaire David Rubenstein, the Series C funding round closed at $142 million. Investments were also made by PayPal Ventures and existing investors RRE Ventures and Liberty City Ventures. To date, Paxos has raised $240 million in funding, earning its spot as the highest funded firm in crypto after Circle (which has raised $271 million). It has not been revealed what Paxos’ valuation is following this round.
Founded in 2012 under previous name itBit, the New York-based company is known for providing blockchain-based services to financial institutions and operates a cryptocurrency exchange. Paxos is credited as one of the first bitcoin startups to operate as a regulated trust company. Under this, it has offered custody services for U.S. customers under New York Banking Law. Paxos made waves when Paypal partnered with the startup to enable customers to buy and spend bitcoin under its trading service partnership.
It was shared that Paxos intends to utilize its new capital to accelerate and support its current growth trajectory which will include scaling operations and platform capacity to meet new demands. The team will likely double as a task force and is assembled to explore all opportunities for growth while continuing to invest and develop enterprise-grade infrastructure solutions. Paxos will deepen its commitment to regulation, reliability, and security to keep up with the demand of its service and the subsequent exposure to risk that will magnify.
Speaking on the round, Charles Cascarilla, CEO and Co-Founder of Paxos said, “Our pipeline has expanded very significantly from having been in the millions of customers maybe a year ago to, now, billions of customers through partnerships…that is partly why we need to raise this capital, to really take advantage of the growth opportunities.” He further shared that the company will develop new products that help institutional clients track traditional assets like securities and commodities on a blockchain in a process labelled tokenization.
